16 Top Tips From Blogging Experts For Beginners

I've heard blogging referred to a couple of times recently as a mixture between an art and a science. If this is true (and I think it is), there’s no ‘right way’ to approach blogging if you want to be successful. There are plenty of people who’ve done a great job of it though, and I thought it would be useful to learn from them.

These 16 bloggers shared one important tip each for blogging beginners. No doubt, even if you’re not a beginner these tips will probably prove to be useful.

1. Get ideas from your audience

Create blog posts that answer the most interesting questions from people you engage with on social media.

Dave Larson, founder of @tweetsmarter

This can be a great way to gather ideas of what topics people would most like to read about, which will help your blog grow! One of the best ways I’ve seen this in action is through blog comments or Tweets. In one example, here on FastCompany a lot of people requested a post that features more women entrepreneurs:

Now, a few weeks later adding such an article where just women contributed and built great businesses was a big hit:

2. Understand your audience

Understand your audience better than they understand themselves. It takes a lot of upfront research, and often means being a member of the very tribe you’re trying to lead – but it pays off.

Brian Clark, founder and CEO, Copyblogger

Understanding your audience better means you’ll have a better idea of what blog content will resonate with them, which is a good start when you get to writing blog posts.

A great technique for doing this is to simply ask your readers first on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn with an engaging quote. If people respond well to it, than this is probably a great topic to write about. An example for this comes from Andrew Chen who famously “tests” his blogpost ideas on Twitter first.

And so does Joel here at Buffer. Take this example from a recent Twitter post of his, where he simply tweeted one quote to see how well people liked a topic before he blogged about it:

3. Write for yourself first

Write for yourself first & foremost. Ignore the fact that anyone else will read what you write; just focus on your thoughts, ideas, opinions and figure out how to put those into words. Write it and they will come.

Adii Pienaar, founder of PublicBeta

Adii’s experience in writing for himself firstly has made a difference to his blog in ways he didn’t expect:

Yes, since I’ve been writing for myself, I’ve found that I write more and I publish more often. I think though that the main reason for that is that I don’t decide whether to publishing something based on the traction / reception that the post will receive within my audience; instead if I want to publish something, I do so. For myself.

4. Build your email list

Start building your email list from day one. Even if you don’t plan on selling anything, having an email list allows you to promote your new content to your audience directly without worrying about search rankings, Facebook EdgeRank, or other online roadblocks in communications.

Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger

When you’re asking readers to sign up for your email list, you might want to try experimenting with different language. Willy Franzen found that his subscription rate jumped 254% higher when he changed his call-to-action from “subscribe by email” to “get jobs by email”:

Using this phrase more clearly tells Willy’s readers what they’re signing up for, which clearly worked well!

5. Love your existing readers

Love the readers you already have. A lot of bloggers get quite obsessed with finding new readers – to the point that they ignore the ones they already have. Yes – do try to find new readers but spend time each day showing your current readers that you value them too and you’ll find that they will help you grow your blog.

Darren Rowse, founder of ProBlogger

Focusing on your readers is a great way to get to know them better (see tip #2). I love the way Daniel Burstein describes blog readers’ expectations of you as a blogger:

A blog is really two things. One, simply a piece of technology, a platform. But, two, it is a promise in the minds of most readers, who expect that the blog should have actual content with some elements of value that is hyper-targeted to their needs. Much like with a newspaper. Readers don’t just look at a newspaper as newsprint that is delivered on their driveway every morning. They look at it as valuable information about their city, where they live, and the things that they do.

6. Focus on building an amazing call-to-action

I screwed up for years. I’d blog and blog. Some of my posts were doing very well on places like Hacker News, but I had such hard time getting return visitors. And very few people bothered to follow me on Twitter.

Don’t rely on people to do the work to find your Twitter account. Don’t rely on them to do the work to find your details in a sidebar. People are blind to sidebars. Thanks banner ads!

Finish your blog post with some kind of call to action to signup for an email list or follow you on Twitter. When I started doing this, I immediately increased my Twitter followers by 335% in the first 7 days.

Nate Kontny, founder of Draft

Nate uses a simple call-to-action on his blog now, that looks like this:

This particular technique we’ve also tested here on the Buffer blog and found it to work amazingly well to bring attention to other blog posts we’ve written, like this:

or to Buffer product features, like this:

7. Give stuff away

Give away free content that adds value to people’s lives “until it hurts” and they will love you and become loyal fans.

Jeff Bullas, blogger and author of Blogging the Smart Way

A great example of this is the research done by Incentivibe, who found that adding a giveaway contest pop-up to the bottom-right of their website led to 125% more email subscribers.

8. Be consistent

Consistency is one of the most important things that bloggers tend to forget. It’s much easier to lose your traffic than it is to build it up, so make sure you consistently blog.

Neil Patel, founder of KISSmetrics

A study by Hubspot showed that consistent blogging actually leads to higher subscriber growth rates:

Over a two-month span, businesses that published blog entries on a regular basis (more than once a week) added subscribers over twice as fast as those companies that added content once a month.

9. Give away your knowledge

Don’t be afraid to showcase what you know. Too many bloggers hold back the good stuff out of fear of giving away the “secret sauce.” There is no secret sauce in a world where everyone has high speed Internet access at all times. Today, you want to give away information snacks to sell knowledge meals.

Jay Baer, author of Youtility

Jay’s advice is to share the knowledge you have, rather than keeping it tucked away for a rainy day. Chris Guillebeau follows this advice by offering two free, downloadable PDFs to his readers. Chris also does what Jay calls giving away “information snacks to sell knowledge meals.” On both of the free PDF download pages, Chris markets his book on the right-hand side.

10. Be true to your voice

Stay true to yourself and your voice. People don’t care to follow sites so much as they care to follow people.

Chris Pirillo, founder and CEO, LockerGnome

Another blogger who advocates the importance of the writer’s voice is Jeff Goins. He says that your voice is the most important, yet over-looked part of blogging:

Writing isn’t about picking the right topic; it’s about finding the right voice. What matters, what readers really resonate with, isn’t so much what you say, but how.

11. Give it time – This is why

Plan to invest in blogging for a long time before you see a return. The web is a big, noisy place and unless you’re willing to invest more over a greater period of time than others, you’ll find success nearly impossible. If you’re seeking short-term ROI, or a quick path to recognition, blogging is the wrong path. But if you can stick it out for years without results and constantly learn, iterate, and improve, you can achieve something remarkable.

Rand Fishkin, CEO of Moz

Rand shared these great images with us from his wife’s travel blog,Everywhereist, which shows just how long it can take to see a return on your efforts:

12. Give your email list priority

If you’re blogging to create a business, a movement, or to support a cause, then you need to build an email list. It’s not an option. I don’t even consider my blog to be my community, my email list is my community. Caring about these people, writing for them, and delivering value to them should be your number one goal.

James Clear, entrepreneur, weightlifter and travel photographer

When the New York Public Library focused on growing email subscription rates, this simple home page design with information about what readers could expect to receive boosted numbers by 52.8% over a more complicated version with less information about the actual newsletter:

13. Write catchy headlines

No matter how great your content is, it won’t matter unless you have an amazing headline. People have a split second to decide if they should click on your post, and your headline will make them decide. The headline is also essential in making it easy and desirable for people to share your post. Keep your headlines SPUB: simple, powerful, useful and bold.

Dave Kerpen, author and CEO of Likeable Local

Something we do at Buffer is to test several different headlines for each of our blog posts to determine which ones works best. Here’s an example of what that might look like:

You can read more about this particular approach in more depth here: A scientific guide to writing great headlines on Twitter, Facebook and your Blog

14. Be Yourself

There isn’t one specific set of rules to be successful in blogging. When I started blogging, I had the opportunity to learn from experienced and successful bloggers in the industry. One of the best lessons I’ve learned from them is to simply be me. I didn’t have to be too “professional” or use “big words” to impress others. I had to simply be me.

By being me, I enjoyed writing and the process more. It had me writing more than I usually would too. If you look at the the most successful writers like Seth Godin and Chris Brogan you’ll notice that they are different and unique in their own ways.

Aaron Lee, social media manager, entrepreneur and blogger

Moz CEO Rand Fishkin agrees that telling your company’s story is important, as opposed to following a formula for successful blogging:

Emotion and storytelling have been part of how we communicate with each other and inspire action for thousands of years.

15. Keep it short

Biggest lesson I learned in my past year of blogging. Keep it in the 1–2 minutes read-time length.

Derek Sivers, founder of Wood Egg

Working out the best length for your blog posts can be tricky. You generally need about 300 words minimum to get indexed by search engines, but otherwise the length of your post is up to what you think feels best.

Derek Sivers noticed recently that his shorter posts were much better received by readers and seemed to be shared more, unlike his longer posts:

When I’ve written articles that were too long or had too many ideas, they didn’t get much of a reaction.

When I read books, I often feel bad for the brilliant idea buried on page 217. Who will hear it?

Stop the orchestra. Solo that motif. Repeat it. Let the other instruments build upon it.

The web is such a great way to do this.

Present a single idea, one at a time, and let others build upon it.

According to this Chartbeat graph below, many visitors to your site won’t bother scrolling, and most visitors won’t read more than about 60% of what you’ve written. Keeping it short and sharp then, could be worthwhile.

If you’re looking for a general guide to blog post length, Joe Pulizzi’s blog post, “A blog post is like a miniskirt” might be useful:

A blog post is like a miniskirt.

It has to be short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject.

16. Make it worth referencing – here is how:

One thing I always try to keep in mind before publishing a post is would anyone want to “cite” this for any reason? Just like interesting research is great because it leaves you with a fascinating finding or an idea, I like for my posts to be the same. That doesn’t mean relying on research, but simply making sure each post has an original lesson or actionable item, making it “citable” on the web.

Gregory Ciotti, marketing strategist at Help Scout

Our very own Buffer co-founder Leo has written about a similar thing before:

When writing a post, I get into a mindset to answer just this 1 question with a Yes: “Would anyone email this article to a friend?”

It’s an extremely simple proposition. Yet, it has changed my writing completely. If I put myself into a reader’s head going through a post and seeing whether someone will say “Oh, this is interesting, John will really like this”, then I go ahead and publish it. It’s almost like an invisible threshold to pass. I need to improve the post until this level is reached. I will iterate, find more research, get more examples, until I can truly imagine this happening.

I’m sure there are lots more great tips out there about building a blog. What’s your favourite?

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Is Responding To Comments Worth It?

You’ve seen me respond to thousands of comments, but is it really worth it? To date, I’ve responded to 50,696 comments on Quick Sprout and a few thousand more across the web.

On average, it takes me just over a minute to read each comment and then respond to it. Sure, sometimes it only takes a few seconds, but in many cases, you ask complex questions, and my responses require more time.

Here are the pros and cons of responding to comments:

Responding to comments increases your traffic

One of the biggest benefits of responding to comments is an increase in traffic. The more comments you have on each blog post, assuming they aren’t spam, the more text each page will have.

The more text you have on a page, the more long tail keywords you will rank for. This will help increase your overall search traffic.

In addition to more search traffic, you’ll notice that the number of repeat visits will go up as you continue to respond to more comments. When you respond thoughtfully, people look forward to your responses and come back to your site to read them.

When I look at my 3 marketing blogs, Quick Sprout, KISSmetrics, and Crazy Egg, I see that Quick Sprout has the highest percentage of returning visitors at 40.8%. KISSmetrics is at 34.1%, and Crazy Egg is at 18.7%. These last two blogs aren’t as active from a comment perspective because we don’t consistently respond to every comment.

Responding to comments increases sales

One thing I didn’t expect to find is that comments impact sales. At Quick Sprout, I help cover some of my costs by selling memberships to Quick Sprout University. What’s interesting is that most of the people who have bought the membership have commented on the blog.

A large portion of University members – 68.1% –  have commented on the blog before. Maybe these people are giving me money because they are thankful for my responses to their comments, or maybe they appreciate the free content I am publishing.

I don’t know the exact reason why commenters are more likely to purchase, but they are. For that reason, I should focus on encouraging more comments since the percentage of people who comment on the blog is less than 2%.

Responding to comments increases social shares

I surveyed two groups of users: people who commented on the blog and those who didn’t. I asked them one simple question: would you consider sharing Quick Sprout on Twitter or Facebook?

People who commented were 294% more willing to share a Quick Sprout post on the social web.

By responding to comments, you are encouraging more comments, which indirectly helps increase social shares, which should help you increase your social traffic. Not only will you get more search traffic and repeat visitors, but you will also get social media traffic.

Responding to comments allows you to control your traffic

Any time you comment, you can link to a page of your choice as there is a URL field in a comment box.

Every time I respond to a comment, I put quicksprout.com in the URL box. As a quick test, I had my developer change all of the Home Page links (in my 50,696 responses) to my About Page.

The result was an increase in traffic by 5,137 visitors a month to my About Page. Sure, the traffic to my Home Page decreased, so I changed that URL back to it, but it shows that I am able to control where I send a portion of my traffic.

After a while, it adds up. In a span of a year, I can direct 61,644 visitors to a page of my choice. Commenting will help you direct traffic to the pages that matter.

Responding to comments takes time

I spend roughly 26 hours a month on responding to comments. It may not sound like a lot of time, but that is about half a workweek each month that goes towards commenting.

I’ve tried leaving shorter comments over the last few months, but I noticed that the average number of comments per post has declined by 39%. I have to go back to more thorough replies as the stats show that leaving well-thought-out responses produces a positive return on investment.

If you want to do well, you can’t do a mediocre job at responding to comments. You need to take the time and respond with something that people will want to read.

Conclusion

Overall, I would have to say responding to comments is worth it. It’s so valuable that not only should you be responding to comments on your blog, but you should also be responding to comments on industry-related blogs.

The results on Quick Sprout have been so great that I even started to respond to some of the comments on Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. I’ve only been doing it for a few months, so I haven’t seen any results yet, but I expect to see a positive impact within the next 12 months.

So, what do you think about responding to comments? Do you think it’s worth it based on the data I shared?

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Some Very Useful Websites To Help You Day To Day

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Online Marketing Tools To Boost Productivity and Make Your Life Easier

When I first started my career as a digital marketer, I remember I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of projects, clients, and deadlines.

Today’s digital marketers often wear many hats, manage a slurry of different projects, both large and small, and can be responsible for most, if not all, of a client’s online marketing campaign, including social media, email marketing, content, search engine optimization, etc.

Not only do we have to stay on top of managing projects for our clients, but we must be diligent in marketing ourselves as well (Did you tweet yet today?  Respond to all those blog comments?  And how’s your Klout score coming along?).

All I can say is thank goodness for all those online tools that make my job easier.

Oh, you’re wondering what online tools I’m talking about?

Well, I’ve compiled a little list of all of the tools and software I’ve used at some point in my career that help me manage my day-to-day responsibilities.  Some are new and some have been around for a while, but my hope is that these tools will help make you more productive, and ultimately more satisfied, doing the best job in the world (am I biased? I think not…).

16 Online Marketing Tools that Make Life Easier

Project Management/Collaboration

Mavenlink

Mavenlink is the clear winner for our team because of its robust feature list, covering everything from managing tasks, to tracking projects (both internally and with clients), sharing and receiving files, and tracking time and expenses.

It’s basically an all-inclusive project management tool and it integrates with Google Apps, which is very helpful.

One of my favorite features of Mavenlink is that you can assign tasks to others (either clients or those within your organization), assign a deadline and see when they’ve started and completed said task.

It takes a little time to figure out but once you get the hang of it, it’s invaluable for the busy digital marketer (and clients seem to like it, too).

Basecamp

Basecamp has been around for a while, so you’ve probably heard of it already.  It’s another cloud-based project management tool but unlike Mavenlink, you can’t track your time or expenses.  And you can’t task other people.

But if you simply need  a client-based project management tool that allows you to share files and conversations on a project-by-project basis, Basecamp works well.

Trello

Trello is a good tool for individual, not client, project management.  Essentially, you create a “board” for each project, make lists to record your progress on that project and create a “card” that outlines each task.

It reminds me a tiny little bit of Pinterest but instead of photo pins you have task cards.  It’s easy to learn and easy to use.

Search Engine Optimization

Moz

Moz is another SEO tool that’s super easy to use and navigate.  You can see how your keywords are ranking, compare keywords side-by-side to see how they compare against one another, and see which search engines are sending traffic to your site all from your dashboard.

The wonderful visual layout of the dashboard is, in my opinion, the best feature of Moz.

File Management

Dropbox

Dropbox allows you to access your files in the cloud, meaning you can be anywhere and still access a file you need.  I like it because it sort of acts like an online server, storing all your files (even really big ones) online so that all the members of your team can view and/or edit them.

This is especially helpful if your team is spread out in multiple offices or in different locations.  No emailing large files back and forth.  Just drop it in Dropbox.

Google Drive

I love love love Google Drive.  And I’ll say it again – I LOVE IT.

Our team uses this all the time to share resources, files and create and update spreadsheets.  Unlike Dropbox, in which you pay for the amount of storage space you can use, Google Drive is free.  And the storage limit is huge – 15 GB.  Did I mention it’s free?

Plus, an unlimited amount of users can use Google Drive, whereas Dropbox charges per user.  Drive also offers Google’s amazing search capabilities (handy for searching for files or folders) and a whole host of apps (like DocuSign).

Just upload and “share” a document with your team member or create a document right in the Drive.  The only caveat – you have to have a Gmail account in order to use it.

Social Media Management

HootSuite

If you manage multiple social media networks for multiple clients, HootSuite is a GREAT tool.  You can use the scheduler to pre-schedule your posts for a specific date and time and you can preview how it will look.

Using HootSuite’s “streams,” you can view all of your posts on all your networks in a visual format, which makes it super easy to keep track of what you are posting where.  You can also track your campaign analytics, a handy feature for those who are regularly reporting the success of their social media campaigns.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck allows you manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts from one dashboard, similar to HootSuite.  It also updates you when a post goes live with a handy little box that pops up on the corner of your screen.

TweetDeck only works for Twitter and Facebook, though; it doesn’t integrate with other accounts like Google+ or LinkedIn.  Our team manages all the social networks for our clients, which is why we prefer HootSuite.

Visual Content Tools

Piktochart

Are infographics a part of your digital marketing campaigns?  If they are, please please please don’t use PowerPoint.

Piktochart is a wonderful little program that allows you to create graphic design-worthy infographics.  It’s pretty user-friendly (the newer version is a LOT better than their older version, with less glitches) and you don’t have to be a designer to end up with a beautiful infographic.  It stores them all in your account so you can edit them at any time, which is great for those clients which require 60,000 changes.

Prezi

Prezi is another great way to easily create visual content.  Prezi is a super cool presentation application that runs on the cloud.  If you want to create out-of-the-box content that displays information in an engaging, interesting way, try Prezi.

Organizational Tools

Flexadex

Does anyone else have a drawer full of business cards?  Please tell me I’m not the only one.

Flexadex is a great way to store important contact information for all your clients and colleagues online so you can look up someone’s information wherever you are.

Passpack

If you manage lots of blogs, social media accounts, etc., it can be pretty annoying to forget or lose your passwords.  Passpack is great because you can store all your usernames and passwords in your online account and share them with your team.

Evernote

Are you a list person?  I am.  I NEED lists.

Okay, maybe I don’t need them, but keeping organized with notes and lists keeps me from going crazy.

Evernote allows you to make notes with images, voicemails, and even website links.  You can label your notes, turn them into reminders and share them.  Bye-bye three ring binder.

Oh yeah, and we can’t forget about Google.

Google Alerts

This is a handy little tool, courtesy of Google, that tells you when your brand is mentioned online.  You can even have it alert you when your competitors are mentioned.  Pretty helpful for knowing who’s talking about you on the Web.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is indispensable for monitoring the results of your (or your clients’) website traffic and where that traffic comes from.  The graph view is especially handy to visually see when your website traffic goes up and down so you can better understand how to capitalize on the actions that caused traffic to increase.

Google Calendar

We use this all the time to keep track of meetings, video shoots, conference calls, out of office reminders, etc.  You can share the calendar with your team and your clients and best of all – you can have different calendars for different purposes (family, internal meetings, client meetings, etc.).  You can choose to see them all at once, or turn calendars on and off to see one at a time.

Google Apps for Businesses

This is a fully integrated apps system that just makes doing business from a mobile device easier.  The apps include Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar (as discussed above), Google Sites (a web development tool), and Google Groups (for internal or private discussion forums).  The best part about Google Apps is that they all integrate seamlessly with each other.

Google Insights

Wondering how popular a certain keyword is?  Use Google Insights to see if your keywords are gaining or losing popularity over time.  You can search by region and find out what’s popular during certain times of the year, like the holidays.

Are there other online tools you use that I didn’t mention?  Comment and let me know what’s made your life easier.

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Using AdWords Auction Insights To Find Out Who’s Winning On Mobile

In an auction-based ecosystem, it’s only natural to think about the competition.  They’re the ones that play a big part in determining what the auction looks like for you and your keywords.

Luckily, there are lots of ways to learn about your competition in paid search — the important step is turning those lessons into something actionable in your account.

Since the Auction Insights report was released in 2012, you’ve had the ability to see what’s going on with competitors that are appearing in the same auctions as your ads.

Auction Insights is an underused report, in my opinion, especially considering how helpful it can be when it comes time to optimize.

Today, I want to focus on something specific that you can learn about how your competitors are doing when it comes to mobile advertising. With how things are trending, if you’re ahead on mobile then the future is bright for you. And if you’re falling behind, you’ll know what you need to work on to get back into good position.

Reminders About Auction Insights

Before we dive into today’s analysis — just a few reminders about Auction Insights.

• You can run this report at the keyword, ad group or campaign level (and run it across groups of those, as well).
• Auction Insights covers Google search only (i.e., search partner data isn’t included).
• This data reflects performance across the auctions that you appear in. Other advertisers don’t need to be using the same keywords or match types — they just need to be eligible for that same auction.
• Google isn’t giving you guys anything that wouldn’t be publicly available. You’ll just see how often and where someone else is appearing.

It’s a great report. Detailed reconnaissance with just a couple of clicks. So, what to do with that reconnaissance?

Comparing Top Of Page Rate Across Devices

Auction Insights got even better earlier this year when the ability to segment by time and device was added.

And since search result pages on mobile have much less real estate than those on desktop/tablet, it’s imperative that you appear on top of the results for your crucial keywords. So how are you doing at winning the top of the page? And how are you competitors doing at that very same task?

Download your segmented data into a spreadsheet and manipulate it so that you can make it into a nice chart. You have a couple of options to turn your downloaded sheet into a more chart-friendly version:

• Use either VLOOKUP or a quick IF function to get Computers/Mobile/Tablet into columns on the same row to align with display URLs.
• Use a pivot table with your domains as the row, device as your column and top of page rate as your value. (Be sure to omit the “Grand Total” column when making a chart off of this data.)

The end result of this analysis is going to be a chart. I’ve always found that charts are much more convincing than hard numbers (at least when they’re part of a presentation).

If you just want this for your own analysis you might be able to stop at the raw numbers; but, if you’re going to be sending this to anyone else, be it a client or a boss, you really should turn it into a more visually appealing form.

This is getting close to ready, but it’s still pretty busy. I’d recommend filtering out a lot of the noise from this report to make the actionable stuff that much clearer.

Focus on advertisers with a high top-of-page rate on a device, and also include any advertisers that you or your bosses have a particular interest in. Focus the takeaways for your audience.

Of the biggest competitors here, four have turned mobile off entirely (it’s not just that they aren’t on the top of the page — I verified elsewhere in the data). The others, those that are bidding on mobile, are seeing a much higher top-of-page rate than on desktop.

If that doesn’t scream opportunity to you, then maybe it at least says opportunity to you in an inside voice. Your account could have that same mobile benefit — if only you were trying to get there. (The account in this example is basically never on top of the page, which is a separate issue.)

Depending on the results of this analysis, you can revisit your mobile targeting settings and bid adjustments. Other advertisers are appearing above the results — and, with a bit more effort, you could be, too.

Using Double Segmentation For Even Deeper Insights

Segments are a beautiful thing in your reports. You know what’s even more beautiful?  Double segments.

So What?

I’m not going to go into this full analysis today; but, you can also download your data segmented by device and month to actually track how certain advertisers are adjusting their mobile targeting. If you feel like having a really deep dive on your competition, this might be a fun one to do.

If you decide to run one of these analyses, you will most likely find something worth acting on. In a best case scenario, you’re the industry leader, which is still something that you can at least brag about (and make plans to keep yourself in that position). If you identify something that needs fixing then this could inspire improvements to your mobile advertising.

I don’t want to get into all of the steps to mobile advertising, especially when others have covered it so well in recent months.

Just few thoughts for your consideration:

• If your competitors are much more aggressive than you are when it comes to bidding, what are they doing on their sites that might give them better conversion rates and allow for those higher bids? (Shameless plug: they might be following some of Google’s principles of mobile site design.)
• Are there different conversion types that they have which you might be overlooking? Cross-device conversions, calls — even store visits? What are all the ways that can contribute to the lifetime value of a customer?
• Are you thinking about mobile utility on your ads? Good ads and extensions are imperative, especially with recent changes to mobile ads. Drive relevance and increase your Ad Rank so that you can start moving your ads to the top of the page.

Conclusion

The report I presented here is meant to serve as inspiration for you or your decision makers. I think by now everyone has beaten the mobile advertising drum long enough that you get it (especially if you’re reading Search Engine Land).

But if you still know someone (or are someone) that needs a bit more convincing to fully commit to  mobile advertising, this might be the report that makes a breakthrough.

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